Message from the Director

Since the inception of the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program in 1930, it has grown substantially in the scope of information collected and the number of users who rely on its statistics to evaluate the extent of crime in their communities. The Program’s annual publication, Crime in the United States, has evolved from a nine-page monthly report into an expansive web-based annual edition. Through the years, the primary objective of the UCR Program has been to provide reliable crime statistics for use by law enforcement, criminologists, sociologists, legislators, municipal planners, the media, and the general public.

The success of the UCR Program rests on the collaboration of thousands of law enforcement agencies. In 2012, more than 18,200 such agencies submitted their crime data to the FBI, indicating that violent crime increased for the first time in six years by an estimated 0.7 percent. In the face of this increase, we will continue to work with our partners to prevent violent crime. To that end, the UCR Program plans to collect our nation’s crime data with a new, automated data collection system beginning in 2014.

The FBI faces a multitude of challenges, including stringent budgets, changes in our work force, and the implementation of new technology. Although change is constant, the challenge is to meet it without losing sight of our mission. As the UCR Program continues in its ninth decade, we will embrace new technologies and other solutions so that we can continue to provide meaningful and dependable crime data to our valued partners.